Aggregative data infrastructures for the cultural heritage

Abstract

Aggregative data infrastructures (ADIs) are information systems where organizations can find the tools to integrate their data sources to form uniform and richer information spaces of object metadata descriptions. Novel sustainable approaches for the realization of ADIs are based on the adoption of ADI enabling technologies which support the realization, maintenance and upgrade of ADIs and promote functionality re-use. The Cultural Heritage (CH) community is one of the most active in the realization of ADIs. Besides, the realization of ADIs for CH can be particularly complex when compared to other disciplines due to the possibly high heterogeneity of data sources involved. In this paper, we present the D-NET Software Toolkit as an ideal candidate for the realization of sustainable, extensible, scalable and dynamic ADIs for CH. To this aim we present the D-NET framework and services, and demonstrate its effectiveness in the CH scenario by describing its adoption to realize a real-case ADI for the project Heritage of the People's Europe. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.